


How to Live On

by mosomacilany



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Angst, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Reaper War
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-10-14
Updated: 2015-10-21
Packaged: 2018-04-25 06:50:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,174
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4950712
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mosomacilany/pseuds/mosomacilany
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two years after the Reaper War Kaidan still didn't get over Shepard's death.</p><p>My native language is not English, so please be gentle. :)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Treatment - Part One (Kaidan)

**Author's Note:**

> If you enjoyed, please feel free to tell your opinion :)
> 
> Feedbacks are appreciated and they are the fuel of inspiration and motivation :)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kaidan wakes up in a medical facility at Rio after an ill-fated military operation.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Feedbacks are appreaciated :)
> 
> Please, tell me your opinion :)

Kaidan lay in his bed in that rigid white ward and stared out the giant floor-to-ceiling window. At least he had a sea view. A nice view to the Atlantic Ocean and the Sugarloaf Mountains. Rio was quite pleasant in springtime with those always sunny beaches and promenades. There was no trace of the Reaper War anymore. People moved on, began to forget. A few decades and that year of war, when the galaxy was almost wiped out, would be only a chapter in the history books.

 _Don’t leave me behind._ He pleaded to her on the battlefield. He wanted to be beside her until the end. He replayed their last moment in his mind for a thousand times. He had nightmares about it almost every night. Two bloody years and he still couldn’t escape from it. He should have been on the Citadel with her… maybe he could have saved her.

Nobody knew what exactly happened on the Citadel. The Crucible fired and as if by magic the Reapers collapsed. And thanks to the mass relays this happened everywhere in the galaxy.

They never found her body, just Anderson’s and the Illusive Man’s. At first they tried to move everything to find her, they clung to that slight glimmer of hope that she might be still alive. They sought for her, searched the galaxy, but they found nothing. And as the days became weeks and the weeks months they gave up one by one. At first Miranda and Jacob, lastly Garrus and Liara. They buried her, gave her a final goodbye. She got a nice and empty tomb in the cemetery of the Alliance war heroes. Kaidan couldn’t go to the ceremony despite all the persuasion of his friends. He drunk himself into unconsciousness that day, like being blissfully intoxicated would have solved anything.

Hackett’s assignment was a convenient solution. A high-risk operation to eliminate the remained Cerberus cells. It was more elegant than taking meds and binging it down with some bourbon. He practically waited for something going off badly. And an explosion… a falling concrete block… and darkness… It was finally over.

But he woke up in that Alliance facility with broken bones and the traces of countless surgeries which saved his life. He didn’t ask them to save him. He wanted to die, wanted to fall in battle to meet her again at the other side, if there is an afterlife. But despite his every effort the life didn’t give him what he wanted. Just a white ward and stringent medical staff with antiseptic odor.

He heard the clink and the slide of the metal door. It was time for the daily medical visit. He heard the sounds of boots on the floor. And soon a woman in red and white medical uniform appeared at his bed.

“How are you feeling today, Major Alenko?” he heard the usual question. _Dr. E. Cannigan, Head Physician of the Biotic Division._ That was on her name plate. Kaidan could recognize her monotone and analytical voice everywhere.

She had a pleasant, almost tinkling cadence, but she spoke without any nuance or tone, like she was an AI or a VI and not a human being. Kaidan sometimes wondered that she is whether a living being or a robot who was a spitting image of a woman, like EDI once was.

Her auburn hair was strictly combed into a ponytail, and her steel-blue eye glittered through her thick-framed glasses.

It was uncommon. Nowadays almost everybody went through the eye surgery as soon as possible. Kaidan did not know the time when he saw anybody wearing it. Maybe his grandfather. He always kept one on his desk in the study for reading. The doctor in that glasses looked like a memento of a bygone era, like she didn’t belong to this age, just for some reason she stuck here.

“Hell of a headache, doc.” he answered. Those bloody migraines became more frequent after Mars. Sometimes they were so intense that even his nose began to bleed. The doctors didn’t tell him, but he knew that those L2 implants slow and steady would kill him. Another reason to die young. He wouldn’t let it to cripple him.

“Would you like some anodyne?” the doctor inquired. He feebly nodded. Cannigan took a syringe and injected some meds into his infusion. A couple of moments and the throbbing pain in his temple faded and made his mind a bit fuzzy. He didn’t know what kind of drug they used but it was damn effective. It not just eased his agony, but kept his mind in a mist of semi-consiousness. But it wasn't effective enough to hush away his memories, which burned into his mind and haunted him.

The doctor ran her scanner through his body, read the results hummed thoughtfully, not saying anything. After she finished went to the desk next to his bed and recorded the results in her tablet.

“You’re lucky, Major,” she stated after a couple of minutes. “Your body has totally adopted the synthetic tissues. Only your broken bones haven’t knitted and it seems your regeneration will take time.”

“How much time?” Kaidan asked as looked to the physician. She had a slender figure, the bookworm type, not the athletic. Her skin was pale, like she spent most of her life in a laboratory. She was too young to be a head physician; she was at the beginning of her thirties, maybe. Kaidan found her pretty and began to wonder how she might look when she smiles or when she is not so official.

“At least two weeks, plus rehabilitation," Kaidan released a resigned sigh. He wanted to get the hell out of there. He was fed up with those white walls, the odor of antiseptic and disease and the indifferent doctors for who he was just a bunch of data.

“Meanwhile you should consider a psychological treatment.”Hhe frowned to this. Cannigan didn’t look up from her tablet, just typed the test results and ran analyses on it. “You had many traumas in the past years. It would be beneficial.” Her cadence was like she read out a public announcement.

“I don’t need a shrink, doc” he murmured under his nose and turned his gaze to the ceiling.

“Major, you have shown several symptoms of Posttraumatical Stress Disorder since London. You have rejected the treatment so far, but I truly believe…”

“I DON’T NEED A SHRINK, DOC!” He yelled as looked to the doctor again. She didn’t even react on him. Kaidan suspected that he wasn’t the first and wasn’t the last patient who shouted at her. She just registered it with a nod and turned back to her notes.

Heavy silence descended on the ward. Kaidan gazed out the window to the beach with glassy eyes, while the doctor recorded her daily report. He stole some glances on her, tried to read something, anything from her face, but she was like a marble statue.

“According to your military file you served on the SSV Normandy.” Cannigan said eventually. “You are a biotic specialist, the second human Spectre.”

“And?” Kaidan asked in impatient tone. Cannigan looked up from her tablet straightly into his eyes. That was the first time he noticed that brown line in her left iris.

“My brother was a biotic specialist. In fact, he fought in your company, Major.” she responded. “He died in London.” Her voice trembled a bit and her eyes glistened in the unshed tears. This was the first time since she treated him that he saw any sign of any emotion of her. She took a deep sigh and returned to her tablet, wiping out those tears.

“I’m sorry” Kaidan replied in low voice, not louder than a whisper. He began to wonder who could have been her brother. He didn’t know any Cannigan in his company; in fact, he didn’t know anybody in his company too well. He did not have much time to fraternize with them. Right after the division formed, the Reapers attacked, he returned to the Normandy and became a Spectre.

“It’s not your fault, Major. It’s nobody’s fault. In war people die.” Her answer was cold, more likely bitter. It was like she lost more in that war than just her brother. Almost everybody lost somebody in the Reaper War, and some people lost everything, had to start over from nothing.

After she ran the last test on her tablet she stood up from the desk. “That would be all for today, Major.” that slight nuance of emotion disappeared from her voice once again, the impersonal and professional doctor has returned, part of the well-oiled mechanism.

Kaidan nodded as an acknowledgement and she headed to the exit, but before she reached the panel of the metal door turned back to him.“Can I do anything to make your dwelling here more comfortable?” she inquired “Some vids? Music? Reading?”

“I think a good Canadian ale is out of question.” Kaidan responded but not looked at her, just stared the foaming sea and the golden sand of the beach. He heard her chuckling. It was pleasant like a sweet melody.

“My superiors wouldn’t appreciate it.” she replied “But I can lend you my favorite book... classic literature... if you would like.” Kaidan turned to her and tried to force a bland smile on himself. As their eyes met, he saw that she smiled either. She seemed much prettier, much nicer when she smiled, like she was a completely different person.

“Thanks, doc, but I’ll be all right.” Cannigan registered it with a nod and exited.

* * *

The following few days other doctors visited him for the daily inspection. And as the days passed he realized that he missed Cannigan’s voice, as she asks him those usual routine questions. He inquired about the doctor’s whereabouts from her colleagues, but they only gave him evasive answers as injected tranquilizer or anodyne into his infusion, making his mind fuzzy, his perception blunt, but kept his pain low. He couldn’t imagine how great his agony would be without these meds.

He spent his time with sleeping or staring out the window. Eventually he regretted rejecting Cannigan’s offer for some entertainment. The sound proofing made the ward agonizingly silent. He could give anything to hear the voices of the other side of the window, to hear the rustling of the wind or the roaring of the sea, or to feel the caressing sand under his feet. That ward without any stimulus slowly drove him to madness.

Nobody knew he was in that facility, nobody knew about his last assignment. It was highly classified. So there was nobody to visit him, only that well-oiled, impersonal staff of the hospital. And this state of solace made him to miss even that cold and stern physician.

The current dose of meds made him to fall asleep and relive those last moments with Shepard in London once again.

 _When this is over I’m going to be waiting for you. You’d better show up._ But she was the one who didn’t show up. And he cursed himself for a thousand times letting her to evacuate him from the battlefield.

 _I can’t lose you again._ But he did, letting her to run to the Citadel without him. After those years he still felt the taste of their last kiss in his mouth, the taste of desperation and hope.

 _No matter what happens… know that I love you. Always._ Her last words in the chaos of the battle as she walked to him, like nobody else was there just them. And then she vanished and the Citadel blew up with her on board.

He startled from his nightmare, swam in cold sweat, battled for breath. The ward was pitch dark, just as the whole facility, only a few room breathed light. He always woke up from these dreams in the middle of the night and he could never sleep back, just stared to the void and tried to recall Shepard’s face, her ebony-black hair and deep brown eyes, but her image became more and more vague every time.

He blindly reached out his bedside table for some water, when he touched something on it. Something hard with a strange feeling on his fingertips. He switched on the light to see what it is.

It was a book. An actual book.

Kaidan hasn’t seen one since his childhood. His grandfather collected them. They had soul he said. In the Reaper War most of the archives which preserved these things destroyed. Only private collections remained. But nowadays nobody read an actual printed book.

He took it into his hands and leafed it through, sniffed the smell of the yellowed pages, when a scrap of paper fell from it.

_Just in case. Cannigan._

Her handwrite was elegant with well-curved letters, anacronistic, just like her in that glasses.

Kaidan hummed as read the spine of the book. It wasn’t a long one; he could read it in one night. It was better than staring into the void and driving himself to madness. So he opened it at the first chapter. And when the sun appeared on the horizon he finished it.

And strangely he felt himself better that not spent another night with self-loathing or recalling his memories about Shepard. As he finished the last word of the book and shut it reached out for his tablet on the bedside table and began to browse the database of the physicians in the facility. And he finally found her:

_Elisabeth Mary Cannigan, MD., Biotic Physiology Researcher._


	2. Treatment - Part Two (Elisabeth)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Elisabeth works in her office late at night when a fellow doctor visits her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Feedbacks are appreaciated :)
> 
> Please, tell me your opinion :)

Elisabeth sat in her office and read that file for a countless time that night while reran the tests on her computer. She rubbed her temple as analyzed the data. But for a thousandth time the same results came out. With a blasé sigh dropped the tablet on her desk and slumped back in her chair. That was her third night over those reports and test results but she just milled around in one spot. She raked her face with her fingers then shook her head to continue the work with renewed energy. There had to be a solution.

Her metal door slid. Alex came through it with a cup of steaming coffee. Elisabeth took a short glance on him then returned to her files. The man took the mug at the side of her table and then sat down the couch at the other side of the office.

"For God's sake, Lis, your shift has ended hours ago. Go and get some sleep." Alex's voice was chiding, but she only registered it with a nod as reached out for the mug and sipped from it. "Tell me, when was the last time you rested or went on a vacation?" Elisabeth took a short, sulky glance to her fellow doctor and buried into her file once again. "I can tell you..." he continued. "...it was exactly three years ago. On the day of the attack." She pursed her lips as launched a new test on her computer.

"Will you undertake the Major's PTSD-therapy?" Alex lit on a cigarette, took a deep suck into it and as thoughtfully blew the smoke out surveyed Elisabeth.

"He rejects it." he answered.

"I will persuade him." She read the medical and military file through once again.

_Major Kaidan Alenko; System Alliance Military,1st Special Operations Biotic Company; Citadel Spectre._

Alex chuckled as sucked another blow from his cigarette. “St. Elisabeth, the patron of the damaged war heroes." he laughed. Elisabeth looked up from her desk with that annoyed expression on her face, which always made Alex guffawing. She elbowed on her desk resting her chin on her palm and waiting her colleague to stop it.

“Seriously, Lis. I’m more concerned about you.” he said lastly. “You could use a therapy either.” Elisabeth frowned as leaned back on her seat. She took down her glasses and clipped the bridge of her nose between her fingers. Here comes the usual predication. “You’ve been working without a break since Jon…” he stopped for a moment and swallowed his unsaid words. “It won’t make them come back if you work yourself to death.” She hummed as took the file into her hand and continued the reading, trying to ignore Alex’s words.

_Status: Active Duty._

_Military History: Classified._

_Implants: L2. Unstable._

“If you would do some scientific work at least.” he didn’t stop. Elisabeth knew him enough to know that he won’t let her working until he finishes his loft speech. So she pursed her lips and looked to him with her most serious gaze, trying to signal that he disturbed her.

But Alex was adamant. “You and Jonathan were the best biotic researchers in the Citadel Space. You were at the edge of a breakthrough. You could revolutionize biotic implant surgery.” His speech became more and more heated with every word. “But instead you rot in this facility and waste your time and talent to foster patients, like Alenko. A depressed jarhead with acute suicidal tendencies.”

“I’m doing my job onto which I'm sworn.” she hissed. “It was his research, not mine.” And she returned to her file once again. Alex jumped up from his seat and stormed to her, snatched the tablet out of her hand and smashed it to the metal wall. He spun her seat to him and towered over her.

“It was your research, we both know.” he grunted. “Do you think I don’t miss Jon? He was my brother. He loved you and made me promise that I will take care of you if something happens with him.” Elisabeth felt the formatting and aching knot in her throat and the burning tears in her eyes. “It wasn’t your fault, Lis, nor Daniel’s death. But it is YOUR fault that you do not pursue the research what could save millions of lives. People like that poor wretch.” And he pointed out the window toward the other wing of the facility, where Alenko’s ward was.

* * *

It was her fault. Jonathan’s death sat on her soul. He was killed because he defended her. And she wasn’t even there, just got an impersonal message from the Alliance with a folded flag.

 _We regret to Inform you that Dr. Jonathan Cannigan was killed in a Cerberus attack on Terra Nova. The Alliance regards your husband as its own dead._  

She left Terra Nova a day prior. She came back to Earth to visit her brother on his training in Vancouver, inspecting his experimental implants she planted in a few months before.

The details of the attack were classified, but after months spent with battles against Alliance bureaucracy she could read the files. According to the report of the survivors the Cerberus raided the facility because they sought for her. They tortured her husband and when they couldn’t extort any information about her or the research, they shot a bullet in his head. If she had been there, she would have saved him. She would have been abducted by Cerberus and they would have spared the others.

And she left Vancouver and Earth three days before the Reaper attack. She was informed by extranet when she waited for her transfer in the Citadel Docking Bay. Weeks passed in desperation, starving for news before she got some information. Daniel survived the attack and joined to the underground forces. With relieved heart she left the Citadel and returned to Terra Nova.

She spent months in her laboratory with work, tried to finish her research, tried not to think about Jonathan. She was obsessed with work to find a solution for the re-implantation of L2 biotics, like Daniel. But after the final battle she got another letter from the Alliance with a folded flag and a dog tag.

_We regret to inform you that Lieutenant Daniel Mason was killed in action at the battle of London. The Alliance regards your brother as its own dead._

With the damaged mass relays it took a year for her to return to Earth. She missed his funeral and just stood in the middle of the cemetery among the standard looking gravestones and stared the carving which cruelly informs the world about her brother’s shortly measured life.

 _Your brother and husband were heroes._ They said. Fuck all of them. She wished if only they had been coward and they would be beside her. She was left alone in the world.

She got a job in an Alliance facility in New York to continue her research, but as the months passed in endless work, the job once meant everything for her became more and more alien. She has lost her motivation, her purpose to pursue. It became a loathsome obligation and one day she realized that she can’t do this anymore.

She quit her job, buried her files and notes deeply away and moved to Rio, away from her former life to lead the Biotic Division of physicians.

* * *

“I beg you, Lis. If you are determined wasting your knowledge here, at least have some rest.” Alex came after her. He made it as his life goal to foster her, trying to guide her back on her former track, not understanding that she wanted to burn every bridge tied her to her previous life.

She wasn’t Elisabeth Cannigan anymore. She died long ago in that military cemetery. She was a shadow, a ghost who stuck here in this purgatory what others called life.

“What are you expecting from me, Alex?” she hissed.

“Go on a vacation, have a rest, get wasted or just let me make an arrangement for a grief therapy.” Elisabeth began to rub her temple and resignedly nodded. Just one session to make Alex contended or at least to shut his mouth.

“All right, give me an appointment with one of your psychiatrists.” Alex acknowledged her words and went back to the couch. He considered it as a victory, Elisabeth knew that and let him in this illusion. It was enough of his caring for one day.

Her computer signaled the end of the test. Elisabeth checked it and read the same results than before. She grunted in her frustration and sipped from the mug of coffee which became cold meanwhile. She grimaced as tasted it, almost spitted it out, but eventually forced down her throat.

“Why is this Alenko so special you give him such attention?” Alex asked as lit another cigarette.

“He has L2 implants, just like Daniel before the re-implantation.” She answered and he registered with a thoughtful hum. “His condition is deteriorating.” Alex leaned over, rested his elbows on his thighs and looked with that meaningful glance on her.

She perfectly knew what is in his mind. But he was wrong, and his expectations were false. It was just professional curiosity, nothing more, nothing less.

She couldn’t stand his gaze and turned back to her files.

The office shrouded into silence, only the sounds of smoking or typing disturbed it. She felt his eyes on her skin, as he measured her with that analytical gaze he measured his patients, trying to make a profile of her or just find the old Elisabeth in her, as always.

“I’ll arrange an appointment for you the day after tomorrow.” he declared. It wasn’t a request, it was an order. She looked up from her desk and took a sulky glance on him.

“As you wish, Dr. Cannigan.” Her voice was bitter, full with sarcasm, but he just chuckled.

“Charming as always.” and with a light movement jumped out from the couch and headed to the door. “You’d better show up, Lis.” _Or I will be your most dreadful nightmare._ Elisabeth added in herself as watched the door closing behind him.

She was alone at last, she could concentrate on her work. She put on her glasses and took a short glance on the patient’s wing and saw that Alenko’s ward breathed light. She stood up, went to the giant window and looked through it, watched him.

He was a ghost, just like her, who stuck here, just vegetated, waiting for the redemption. It was a miracle he survived that blast. it was a miracle they could save him. But did they really saved him or just prolonged his suffer? She shouldn't think like this, she knew. She was a physician, sworn to preserve life. But this determination of her was lost somewhere like it never existed.

* * *

A few days later Elisabeth was on duty to do Alenko’s daily medical visit. She stood before his door and perused the medical reports.

It was a torture for her every time when she had to visit him. He was her reflection as stared out the window with glassy eyes. By him she could see herself from outside, that empty husk she had become. Sometimes she wondered what Alenko was like before the war. When those warm brown eyes didn’t radiated emptiness.

She took a deep breath before stepped in his door.

“How are you feeling today, Major Alenko?” she asked her usual question, fixating her glance on her tablet.

“Quite well, doc.” she heard the answer. His voice sounded a bit lively than her last visit or just her imagination played with her. She ran through her scanner on his body, read the results and hummed thoughtfully.

“No migraines?” she inquired as recorded the data in her tablet.

“Those meds keep them low.” She registered it with a half-smile at the side of her lips. “By the way thanks for the book. It was a good one.” Elisabeth was astonished. She left the book on his bedside table as a last resort to shake him out from that state of acute depression. She couldn’t believe that he would actually read it.

He handed her back the book. It was her favorite. It was Jonathan’s favorite. She read it for a thousand times after he died.

“I haven’t seen an actual book for ages now.” Elisabeth chuckled and looked on Alenko. She had to admit that he was handsome. A military man, hardened in battle, covered with scars. And those beautiful brown eyes under those thick and long eyelashes.

“I collect them” she said lastly after a few moments of silence. “This is my favorite.” Now Kaidan hummed and released a soft smile. Elisabeth almost responded it.

“Have you considered the PTSD-therapy?” She cleared her throat and finished her daily report.

“I still don’t need a shrink, doc.” he replied resentfully.

In that very moment she wrote down the last word, an asari nurse stepped in.“Excuse me, doctor, but Dr. Cannigan asked me to remind you about your session.” Elisabeth pursed her lips, acknowledged it with a nod and dismissed the nurse.

“Cannigan?” asked Alenko.

“My brother-in-law.” Elisabeth’s answer was short and maybe a bit straightforward.

“Oh” Alenko hummed. “Are you married?” he asked the obvious question. Or not so obvious. She didn't wear her wedding ring anymore. She dropped it into the ocean the day she arrived to Rio.

“I was.” She answered and turned on her heels and headed to the exit.

“What was your maiden name?” he asked.

"A week and you will able to get up from your bed." She tried to evade the answer as pushed the button on the door panel.

"Your maiden name, doc." he inquired again. No, he didn't have the decency to ask, he demanded it. Like she was a foot soldier in his company to who he issues orders.

“If you must have it, it's Mason.” she snapped out and exited.


	3. The Therapy - Part One (Elisabeth)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Elisabeth attends the grief therapy which just makes her more depressed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Feedbacks are appreaciated :)
> 
> Please, tell me your opinion :)

Elisabeth stood at the window of the psychiatrist’s office, who Alex assigned to her, and stared out of it. She watched the lush vegetation of the garden and the hummingbirds, which time to time returned to the exotic flowers. She never sat down on that couch. Every time she stood at the window and never spoke, only when the therapist asked her.

 _Doctors are the worst patients._ They say.

She considered these sessions as a waste of time. Four occasion in two weeks. But this was the only way to avoid Alex’s sermons. So she attended in every meeting, briefly answered to every question, while watched the deep green plants and the vivid colored flowers. The time flowed agonizingly slow during these sessions, filled with heavy silence. Elisabeth tried to predict when the psychiatrist or Alex will give up to save her lost soul and let her working.

 _How hypocrite she was._ She wondered.

She tried to persuade Alenko to have a therapy, while herself was annoyed by the idea itself. Of course it was an obligation as his physician to suggest these PTSD-sessions, but she found them utterly useless. It was only for the doctors to comfort themselves that they did something for the patients’ spiritual peace, like they weren’t just a registration number on a medical record. She wondered that these therapies were for the patients or for their doctors to satisfy their conscience because they not regarding them a human being.

“Dr. Cannigan mentioned that you play on piano.” her therapist stated. His voice was impersonal, like hers when she was on medical examination. Strangely she began to wonder that how Alenko sees her when she visited him. What does he think about her for being so spacing and cold? 

“I used to.” She answered, not looking to her fellow doctor, just watching a hummingbird sipping nectar from a flower.

“Why did you stop it?” she heard the question.

“I do not operate anymore. I used to play before surgeries. It soothed me, helped me to concentrate.” She replied scanning her eyes through the patients who rested in the garden and those always smiling nurses who were eager to help the inhabitants of the facility satisfying their every whim.

She heard typing and the thoughtful hums of the doctor. “Why did you cease to operate?” the psychiatrist inquired.

“You read my medical file. You know the reason, don’t you?” Elisabeth snapped as turned to the doctor. The therapist put down his tablet on the table and gazed into her eyes, trying to delve in her thoughts.

“I want to hear it from you.” Elisabeth so hated his condescending manner. The physicians’ superiority over their patients, as if they know everything about them. And the most detestable thing was that she was had the same manner when she was on duty.

"Mental based limbic nerve dysfunction.” And turned back, facing to the garden, looking on the mechanical clock in the middle of it, gladly registering that only five minutes left of the session. But while a second seemed like a minute it was still too long.

“Is this a permanent symptom?” the psychiatrist inquired.

“Only when I try to hold a scalpel.” Her eyes rested on a particular patient, who she subconsciously sought for. He read another book she gave him. She could not help but smile about it. It was good to see him outside that ward, seeing him being shaved and that life slowly revives in those beautiful brown eyes. It somehow flooded her with good feelings. A feeling she hasn't felt for ages. That she helped someone to heal, maybe not just physically.

She heard that the therapist recording notes in his tablet. “You know, Elisabeth, these things mostly exist just in your head. And your trepidation is only the projection of your anxiety." She snorted in an unamused laughter as clipped the bridge of her nose over her glasses. He spoke like he re-invented the wheel. Elisabeth knew that what caused her hands shaking. She was a physician just like him. She knew that it's the reaction of her body for a traumatic experience. She didn't need a psychiatrist to remind her. Her nightmares did this job.

“There is a piano in the Recreation Area. You should play sometimes.” the therapist suggested. Elisabeth looked on the clock again, seeing that her time was almost up. “Maybe it would be beneficial…” And she heard that redeeming signal which meant the end of the session. She turned on her heels and left the room without a word, not letting the therapist to finish his thought.

After she arranged another session with the assistant Elisabeth went back to her office, perused the daily medical reports and ran some tests on her computer, but something bugged her from a dark nook of her mind not letting her to concentrate on her paperwork. From time to time her glance wandered to the windows, took a look to Alenko’s ward.

She visited him three times during the last two weeks. Alenko always asked personal questions from her. No, he never asked, he demanded the answer, and for some reason she always gave him. She tried to figure out why as tried to figure out why she was so persistent to persuade him about the PTSD-treatment.

She perused his medical file again and those reports she received from the SSV Normandy. She bit her lower lip as read the results of the latest blood tests, and registered the slow but steady deterioration. For a quick moment she took a look to a box in a dark corner, lingered on it a bit, more and more every time, but eventually hushed her preposterous thought.

She dropped the tablet and her glasses on the desk. With the base of her hand rubbed her bloodshed eyes. She massaged the nape of her worn-out neck, tried to ease the increasing pain in her head. She hasn't slept for days now, except those few hours of nightmare. They became more frequent again, seeing Jonathan and Daniel dying every time. So she worked instead, trying to concentrate to the files before her.

She took away Alenko's reports and took another one in her hands. Sometimes she had to remind herself that he wasn't her only patient. _It was just professional curiosity._ She tried to convince herself.

She remembered the day they brought Alenko in. It was a miracle that he didn't die instantly. Comminuted fractures all over his body, his liver crushed, and his implants damaged. She remembered seeing him for the first time, through the thick glass of the emergency room and read his file. He should have died but yet he survived. She asked permission from Admiral Hackett to get insight to his classified military history. They gave her only fragments. Most of his missions after London were high-risk operations, more likely suicidal missions.

 _He has L2 implants._ The Chief Medical Officer said when handled the case to her, what she was reluctant to undertake. And still she perused his files every night, spent hours running tests on her computer. She couldn't give a satisfactory explanation to herself why. She gave up her research long ago and yet this case drove her thoughts back on it every time.

But having L2 implants wasn’t a reason good enough for her attention. But every time she visited him for a medical examination and saw his glassy eyes, it invoked something in her. At first pity, but when she realized the similarities between Alenko and herself something else. Maybe self-hatred, or maybe the desire for self-redemption through him, she couldn't decide. But she became obsessed with his case, trying to heal him in every way she can.

Long hours passed when she looked up from her files again and took a short glance on Alenko's ward. It was pitch dark, just like the whole facility. She stretched her stiff muscles and ran a test on her computer again, while reread Alenko's latest results again.

 _You could save him._ Jonathan told her when Daniel volunteered for the first re-implantation and she rejected it, but eventually performed it on him. This was the last time she held a scalpel in her hand. Nine hours of surgery and success in the end. They revolutionized biotic surgery that day. And in the end a Reaper killed her brother almost a year later.

 _Healing is nothing more than buying time from the inevitable._ She stated bitterly. A doctor is not a demi-god who is over life and death as she thought in her younger years, just a bargainer against death. Physicians are mortal beings too. And mortals make mistakes.

The air of her office somehow became thick and chocking, making her feeling trapped. So she went on a walk to breathe some fresh air and forcing self-discipline on herself. Since Alenko arrived and she began to work on his case, she became more and more distracted by her own depressing thoughts. And Alex’s pestering and these therapies just made it worse. Her mind and eyes wandered more and more to that box in her office, to the box she should have got rid of long time ago.

The empty and rigid corridors echoed her every footstep. They seemed unusually empty. Like she was alone in the whole facility followed by her demons like they were the shadow of her. It was so surreal as she walked through the always so busy halls, where nobody was just her. It was a late and desperate hour when she could face with her own solitude. And she was more pitiful than any of the patients in the facility. And she should be the one who treat them, give them hope for recovery. What a twisted world.

Her feet led her to the Recreation Area. And there was a piano indeed, made by metal and plastic. Elisabeth went to it and hit a key. It was tuned perfectly, but the sound has no soul. It was tinkling and yet empty.

She sat down, smoothed her fingers on it before placed on the starting keys. She closed her eyes and hit them. The memories lead her hands, conjured out those bittersweet tones, painted her vision with colors. At first she saw the music notes before herself, what burned into her mind and then a vague scene appeared.

* * *

_The summer breeze wafts the curtains through the opened windows. It chills the grand salon which is filled with music._

_A ten-year old girl sits before a black piano with straight back, her eyes on the sheets. The metronome rhythmically clicks on the instrument. Her fingers dance on the ivory and ebony keys, caress them gently, like they were so fragile that a stronger hit would break them._

_The other side of the room her mother sits in the armchair. She is beautiful, dresses elegantly like a dame. The girl wants to be like her, slim and graceful, radiating style with every motion. She was weak, but never showed to her children, concealing her disease as much as she could._

_Beside the mother is girl’s piano tutor with that always stern expression on her face, listening that she will misses the tempo change again or can play it without a mistake this time._

* * *

Elisabeth used to play for her mother. Her last memory of her, maybe the only as she listened her in that salon. She wanted her to be a pianist. But she only played for her mother. Because she was so naive, believing that her play is enough to heal her. But only medicine could have done it, but it didn't. From the day of her mother's death she gave up playing on piano and began her medical studies. She only played before surgeries to remind herself why she is doing this. Always the same piece of music. _Comptine d'un Autre Été._ Her mother's favorite.

As she hit the last key she felt the aching knot in her throat but she couldn't shed a tears anymore. Just listened as the last sound of the play shattered into the silent night. She just sat there her fingers on the keys and screamed inside but nothing reached the surface. She was a ghost, a trapped soul, who couldn't find her home anymore.

* * *

Next day she was on duty for the daily medical examination for Alenko. She would never admit but eventually liked to visit the Major. As the time passed he wasn't her reflection anymore. Elisabeth found it utterly ironic that she could heal every damaged patient, but she couldn't heal herself, maybe because she didn't even want.

She read his medical report once again before entered his ward.

"How are you feeling today, Major Alenko?" She took on her professional mask. Impersonal, stringent, just as she was thaught.

"Come on, doc. You are asking this damned question every time." he sulked "What about 'Hey Major, what's up?' or 'How are you?' or something like that?"

Elisabeth took a short glance into his eyes before scanned his body. "I believe I asked the same question, Major. It's a standard obligatory question toward our patients." she answered.

"You know, sometimes you should pull that stick out." he answered. Elisabeth tried to ignore his comment and recorded the test results in her tablet. She waited his usual question about her, she realized. But he didn't ask; still she felt his inquiring glance on her skin.

"Do you have any medical problems? Migraines? Nausea? Dizziness?" She hid behind the wall of professionality as always.

"You performed the first biotic re-implantation on your brother." he stated. Elisabeth looked up from her tablet and looked into his eyes.

"Where did you hear that?" she asked.

"It was in your file." He replied, with a light smirk at the side of his mouth. "And also in the Citadel Medical Journal."

Elisabeth couldn't stand his gaze end began to tinker away with his infusion, concealing her insecurity. "I can give you some better reading than my professional bio, Major." She fixated her glance on the infusion bag, but still feeling his eyes on her.

"It's quite informative, doc." He riposted with some amusement in his voice. "Your husband was your research partner, wasn't he?" Elisabeth bit her lower lip. The Major definitely crossed the line of the physician-patient relationship, but for some absurd reason she wanted to answer his question. She returned to her tablet, feeling the cracks on her shield.

"Aren't you too curious, Major?" She asked as finished recording the daily report.

"Maybe." He answered with some mischievous cadence in his voice. Despite his insolence Elisabeth found this attitude quite a progression from that state he was in a few weeks ago.

"I'll arrange you a session to physiotherapy." She still tried to avoid replying. "Have you considered the PTSD-therapy, Major?"

"You haven't answered my question doc." Elisabeth took a deep breath and took off her glasses, looking into Alenko's deep brown eyes.

"Let's make a deal, Major." she suggested. "I'll arrange you a meeting for PTSD-therapy, you'll attend on it and after each session I'll answer one of your questions." He sat up on his bed and deepened the gaze.

"Any of my questions?" he asked and Elisabeth could swear that something sparkled in his eyes.

"I give you my word, Major." and she offered her hand to him and with a handshake they sanctioned the deal.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The piano piece Elisabeth plays is a masterpiece of Yann Tiersen, and I think it's matches to the atmosphere of the story. :)
> 
> Here is a link, if you want to listen it. :)
> 
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_0GdB4oD6s
> 
> Comptine d'un Autre Été = Rhyme of Another Summer


End file.
